[Outpost]

Acquired an IBM Aptiva 2158-500 recently. Because of the excess gunk on the original hard drive (Quantum 8.4 GB Bigfoot TS), after pulling off any necessary datasets to save, I did a system restore to Win 98. Booted just fine.

Have now upgraded it to Windows Me, and it booted fine. Pulled a Maxtor Diamond Max (4.0GB) hard drive from machine being retired to use as a slave drive to the Bigfoot. After long search found jumper settings and did set them. Am not using Cable Select Option. System booted fine into Me, but "My Computer" doesn't show the slave drive. However when I go into the Set up Utility, the slave drive is properly identified and found.

If I plug into the USB port a jump drive, it comes up as Drive D: I can't seem to access the slave drive at all. The Bigfoot is at the end of the cable, and the slave drive is on the middle connector of the cable. I really don't want to reformat the slave as I have considerable data on there which why I am moving it to the Aptiva.

So, why can I see the slave in Setup, but Windows Me wont register it? What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions will be appreciated. I have searched around the Internet, but have not found an answer to this issue. Thanks.

Edited by Outpost, 18 July 2005 - 01:53 PM.

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Something you didn't mention was the formats of the drives. If the slave has Windows NT on it, it is using NTFS format and ME won't see it. In that case you need to put it in a computer that has a NTFS master and network the two computers and move the files that way. If it was the master then you just need to put it back in to move the files.

BTW, the Bigfoot is pretty slow, you may want to make the more agile Maxtor the master in time.

Edited by Tyger, 18 July 2005 - 02:14 PM.

[Tyger]

Something you didn't mention was the formats of the drives. If the slave has Windows NT on it, it is using NTFS format and ME won't see it. In that case you need to put it in a computer that has a NTFS master and network the two computers and move the files that way. If it was the master then you just need to put it back in to move the files.

BTW, the Bigfoot is pretty slow, you may want to make the more agile Maxtor the master in time.

Edited by Tyger, 18 July 2005 - 02:14 PM.

[Outpost]

Thanks for your reply.

Both drives are FAT32. So the file system is not the problem. I was going to so some experimentation last evening, but pooped out so that did not happen. I read that sometimes systems want the slave at the end, not in the middle.

Yes, Bigfoot is slow. The Maxtor is now got WIN 98 (I think SE) on it. so I may just switch around eventually, and raise that to WIN Me. (I like the older operating systems, thank you. I struggle with all of the new hiding places in XP. I just finished transferring a friends files from Win98 to XP. What a struggle to find the right places for all the files.)

So, If BIOS sees the drive, and the file systems are the same, but WIN Me does not, what gives. A techie here at work said that there was a kink in Me that caused this sort of problem.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

[Outpost]

In regards to the Aptiva 2158, Maxtor as slave drive and Windows ME Problem:

I have resolved my issue, and this post effectively closes my interest in this item. I am posting the what all for anyone's interest should they have a simular problem.

Presenting Problem> Aptiva 2158, upgraded to Windows Me, with the original Quantum Bigfoot drive as the Master. Wanted to install a Maxtor 4 GB drive as a slave on the same IDE line. While setup correctly enumerated the drive, the Operating System (ME) would not register it.

Steps taken to solve> Rechecked jumpers, correct according to manufacturers specifications. Since recognized by Setup, cabling and IDE circuits had to be okay. Drive was okay when used as Master in its previous home or on another machine all together.

SOLUTION>> The catch factor was GoBack, a system restore utility (gone through a number of vendors, now owned by Symantec). It is an excellent product in that it records all changes to the hard drive and one can go back to any number of safe points to do a restore. The catch is that GoBack apparently modifies the Boot sector or Master Boot record of the drive to tell it to go to the GoBack functionality for a possible restore. If you don't hit the space bar within the allotted time, the machine then proceeds to boot as normal. Even if one wants to boot from a floppy, you must allow the GoBack screen to come up, and chose the option "Boot from Floppy". Otherwise it will not ever see the hard drive, and the ramdisk will become C:\.
The solution was to disable GoBack, and then to remove GoBack from the hard drive. This restores the Boot record, and then the OS can see the drive as it should.
GoBack can then be reinstalled so that there is a restore option on both the C:\ and D:\ (in my case the Maxtor slave drive).
The issue here is this: if moving a hard drive to another box, make sure that the boot sector is what will be expected. Remove GoBack, or any other software that pre-empts the normal boot or recognition process.

TO TYGER>> Thank you for your assistance. It helped me to keep thinking about what might be the difficulty. Thanks to GeeksToGo for all the useful information you have available.